Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian author who frequently writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. His works often employ metafiction, weaving stories within stories. Gaarder, hailing from a pedagogical background, delves into philosophical questions, often presenting them through engaging narratives. His writings encourage readers to contemplate the complexities of existence and our place within it.
Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to give his son lessons about life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left when he was four (to `find' herself) and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En route, in Switzerland, Hans Thomas is given a magnifying glass by a dwarf at a petrol station, and the next day he finds a tiny book in his bread roll which can only be read with a magnifying glass. How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? It is all very perplexing and Hans Thomas has enough to cope with, with the daunting prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter with the unfathomable...or does it all have a logical explanation?
Bestselling philosophy book is reimagined for the first time as a graphic novel One day, young Sophie finds a letter addressed to her that contains only one question: "Who are you?" Then there's another one asking, "Where does the world come from?" The sender of these letters remains a mystery, but the questions intrigue Sophie. This is the beginning of a strange correspondence that will lead the young girl on a coming-of-age quest to meet major figures of philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Sartre, etc.). In the first volume, Sophie begins by questioning the philosophers of Antiquity and goes all the way to those of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This is the first of two volumes. In the second volume, she discovers metaphysical doubt while continuing on her way to modern times. This comic book adaptation of Jostein Gaarder's original book breathes new life into a cult classic.
In this selection from her novel, the author introduces the Greek masters, Plato and Aristotle, whose thought provided the building blocks of Western thought.
'My father died eleven years ago. I was only four then. I never thought I'd hear from him again, but now we're writing a book together' To Georg Røed, his father is no more than a shadow, a distant memory. But then one day his grandmother discovers some pages stuffed into the lining of an old red pushchair. The pages are a letter to Georg, written just before his father died, and a story, 'The Orange Girl'. But 'The Orange Girl' is no ordinary story - it is a riddle from the past and centres around an incident in his father's youth. One day he boarded a tram and was captivated by a beautiful girl standing in the aisle, clutching a huge paper bag of luscious-looking oranges. Suddenly the tram gave a jolt and he stumbled forward, sending the oranges flying in all directions. The girl simply hopped off the tram leaving Georg's father with arms full of oranges. Now, from beyond the grave, he is asking his son to help him finally solve the puzzle of her identity.
Panina Manina, a trapeze artist, falls and breaks her neck. As the ringmaster bends over her, he notices an amulet of amber around her neck, the same trinket he had given his own lost child, who was swept away in a torrent some sixteen years earlier. This tale is narrated by Petter, a precocious child and fantasist, and perhaps Jostein Gaarder's most intriguing character since Sophie. As an adult, Petter makes his living selling stories and ideas to professionals suffering from writers block. But as Petter sits spinning his tales, he finds himself in a trap of his own making.
Fifty years ago a girl disappeared from her home in Norway. She ran after a lamb and found herself travelling right across Europe to Palestine, and back through 2000 years to meet the Holy Family in Bethlehem. There she met angels, shepherds, wise men and other biblical characters who joined her on her pilgrimage; and she heard of many of the things that happened in the world in the last 2000 years. In present-day Norway, a boy acquires a strange old Advent calendar. Hidden in each of the windows is a tiny piece of paper. Little by little these pieces unfold the girl's story and as we learn what happened to her, another story is revealed - that of the strange old man who made the calender.
Jostein Gaarder is not one to shirk at the larger questions: who are we? and where does the world come from? In his latest novel, Maya , he once again addresses life, the universe and pretty much everything else, concentrating on the existence of God, the evolution of life as we know it, the nature of consciousness and the meaning behind it all. It's weighty stuff for a mere 300 or so pages of prose, and Gaarder is not entirely successful in dealing with these issues in a readable manner. The novel is set in Madrid and on the unspoiled Fijian island of Taveuini. Frank Andersen, a Norwegian evolutionary biologist who feels "oppressed by the grief that the lack of spirit and permanence in our existence brings", meets up with a beautiful Spanish Flamenco dancer, Ana, her companion Jose, and an English writer from Croydon, John Spoke. They then discuss the big issues. This is where the problem arises; there is too much discussion of ideas and not enough emotional involvement or development of characters. They exist merely as mouthpieces for different theories. Gaarder then adds a bewildering supernatural dimension. There is Ana and Jose's manifesto, a mystical dialogue that describes the creation and evolution process in a series of self-consciously obscure metaphors to consider; hints of past lives; a time-travelling dwarf; and an enigmatic photograph. All this excitement sits uneasily with the almost pedantic prose style. Gaarder's forte is to incorporate challenging themes into a flowing, imaginative narrative. The author's earlier novel, Sophie's World , has been a phenomenal success; the novel has sold over 16 million copies, been translated into 42 languages and is a whistle-stop tour of philosophy, from Socrates to Sartre. Unfortunately in the case of Maya , the story fails to grip the reader enough and lacks the fluidity of prose that made Sophie's World such a delight to read. -- Eithne Farry
The author of the massively successful"Sophie's World" returns with a love story and a novel of ideas, exploring the place of human consciousness in the universeThrough five intense years in the 1970s, Steinn and Solrunn had a happy life together, then they suddenly parted ways, for reasons that are unclear to both. In the summer of 2007 they meet again on a balcony of an old wooden hotel by a fjord in western Norway. It is a place they both have fond memories from, and their meeting turns out to be fateful. But is it purely coincidental that they meet at that particular spot at that particular time? Over a couple of weeks that summer they write emails to each other, and it becomes clear that they have been living with very different interpretations of their shared past.This intimate love story of rediscovery explores the question: canscience explain everything, or does some invisible force influence our lives?"
